Reclaiming the C**t

That has to be my favourite phrase, taken from The Vagina Monologues, it not only makes me laugh, but also rings true. 2013 is the year to reclaim the cunt. Hi, my name is Katy, and I'm a feminist. Before I go on I'd like to clear up a few things:

I shave.

I don't hate men

I don't whine about everything (I do whine about most things, but usually lack of chocolate and gin).

Caitlin Moran, in her hilarious book 'How to Be a Woman', explains the best way of finding out if you are a feminist (this is clearly angled at women, though men feel free to try it):

"So here is the quick way of working out if you're a feminist. Put your hand in your pants.a) Do you have a vagina? and b) Do you want to be in charge of it?If you said 'yes' to both, then congratulations! You're a feminist."

So, I'm a feminist because I answered yes to both those questions, and if you're a woman reading this you most likely answered yes too. Great, so we've got the label, now what the fuck do we do with it? Don't worry we don't have to burn any bras, after spending £30 on a lacy number the last thing I plan to do is douse it in petrol fluid then set it alight whilst screaming 'Death to men'. No, that's a bit too militant. Nor does it mean that every time you see a man do you need to shout 'BASTARD' right in his face. Again, perhaps a tad too militant. So here's the question - what does being a feminist mean?

Freud put it beautifully when he said: "The great question that has never been answered and which I have not yet been able to answer, despite my thirty years of research into the feminine soul, is 'What does a woman want?" I honestly don't know what I want. One day I want to be a housewife, the next I want to be a successful career woman at the top of some global corporation (yes, I'm aware that I can do both), sometimes I think I'd make a good hand model, other days I realise that I'd like to be an author, and occasionally I get those days where I want to sack it all in to just eat chocolate all day. Women don't know what they want because we have so much choice, but we also are continuously getting told what we want, who we are, and what we should be.

I was reading an article the other day on the Daily Mail that told me I'm fat. It then told me what to wear, what to eat, the music to listen to, and to remember that Taylor Swift is a bit of a 'slut' because she's dated more than four men. What baffles me is that most of the time articles on websites like that, or in weekly magazines are written by women. Essentially these are women fucking up other women just so they can pay their rent. I don't need to be told that I'm not attractive enough, that I'll never have an LA body, or that George Clooney is never going to date me. I know these things myself, the media taught me all of this whilst I was growing up, allowing me to develop self-esteem issues, and knocking my confidence. I know this didn't just happen to me, this happens to 99% of the female population, so why are we still putting up with it?

I wish the media would stop telling me what is sexy, or who the hottest person currently is at the moment. The GQ scandal that's going on at the moment makes me laugh. Every one is jumping on the bandwagon that the magazine has been racist. I can't believe that's the big issue here. I honestly don't think it's a big deal that they voted M.I.A as the 'Hottest Pregnant Sri Lankan', she is, I mean I haven't come across many pregnant Sri Lankans, if someone asked me, I would have probably said her.

I do understand that people are a tad pissed off that GQ ranked some of their women according to their race, and that Beyonce was crowned queen of the world, but not 'Hottest Black Chick'. Come on now, that's not the issue here. If the magazine was really racist, would they have picked a black woman has their hottest woman of all eternity? No, of course not, they would have picked Nick Griffin's wife.

What baffles me is where are the people who should be standing up asking why in this day and age we still rate people based on their looks?

The issue is the psychology of what these articles do. What most women will do is look at the article and do the following:

Bitch about the choices

Stare at the ladies for hours comparing body shapes/faces

Become depressed because they work a 9-5 job in an office earning enough to pay their rent, but Beyonce is a multi-millionaire who hangs out with the newly inaugurated President Obama.

But I don't want to feel like that. I don't want my friends to feel like that. I don't want my future children, and grandchildren to feel they're not worth it because perhaps they're not a size 8, rich or famous. I'm sick of seeing people read the calories in a sandwich, then you see them getting out the app to figure out how many miles on the treadmill it'll translate to. EAT THE GODDAMN SANDWICH, THERE IS MORE TO LIFE.

In Germaine Greer's book 'The Whole Woman' she commented that: "Every woman knows that, regardless of all her other achievements, she is a failure if she is not beautiful." It's sad because it's true. What makes it worse is she wrote it in 1999, 14 years ago, and nothing has changed.

Being a feminist isn't about tasting your period, not shaving or hating men. Being a feminist (for me) is realising that you are beautiful, smart and interesting enough and don't need the media to tell you other wise. Being a feminist (again, for me), is about having that confidence to be the best woman you can be, and not hiding behind your vagina, but instead reclaiming your cunt.